Posts Tagged: small business

Common mistakes business owners make when using QR Codes and how to avoid them

QR Codes are two-dimensional codes that connect mobile users to your online presence and can be a powerful marketing strategy. However since it is a new trend, there often costly mistakes that business owners make that can be avoided. This article looks at the common mistakes and how to avoid them when using QR Codes to market your small business. Here are three that I have picked out for the purpose of this article.

1. Not having a clearly defined campaign strategy.
Often business owners will jump ahead of themselves, print a few QR Codes, stick them somewhere and hope something happens. Yet for QR Codes to be effective, they must be the end result of a well thought overall strategy that is based on plenty of market research.

It is important to have specific goals your business wants to achieve such as to get moreFacebooklikes, to subscribe more people to your newsletter, to increase sales in the month of November 2011 etc.

In addition, it is vital to conduct thorough market research on yourtargetmarket and to know how well they understand what QR Codes are, how to scan them etc. If you’retargetmarket is technophobic, you will need to incorporate a lot of educational instructions or decide that QR Codes may not be a good idea.

2. Not testing your QR Codes
A surprising mistake business owners make is not testing their codes. Although QR Codes are free to generate, your media ads are paid for so if a code is faulty, you will have wasted a lot of money on your ads.
You should test your code in the following ways:
* Make sure they work on various mobile devices
* Make sure they work with various code reading apps
* Make sure the color contrast between the code and its background is friendly so that it’s possible to scan the code. Plus make sure the code is sized correctly.
* If you are using codes in outdoor locations, go to each of those sites and check that there is Wi-Fi in the location. After all with no internet connection, QR Codes will not connect to your website.

As we all know, business strategies rank as one of the most searched phrases of all time in any given search engine. This is due to the fact that most of us are desperate enough to try all kinds of business strategies.

After all, business strategies help us ensure that our business is running well, and that they are the best they can be. Business strategies help us maximize the profit, while helping us with the budgeting and give us tips on how to set up a business and as well as how to maintain it.

This article will focus on business strategies for small businesses, that’s because, they are pretty common.

One of the more effective business strategies, for small and even big businesses, is be creative. Do not just stick with the common small business located in your area. Be creative. Think of a business that you can start with a small budget, but you can gradually upgrade and will be profitable. Typing jobs are okay. You can also set-up a printing shop.

Be wary of your surroundings. Take note of the other small business located in your area. Write all of them down, and see which are the most common, which have the most customers and hence, most profit, and which are the least common. This list will help you on what kind of small business that you should set up.

Be courteous, kind and friendly with your customers. If you have already setup your small business, doing all these three things I’ve mentioned will make sure that your customers will be coming back to you because of your pleasing personality. It also helps to always interact with your customers.

Do more than what is expected. Give your all. Give it your 110%. This is because doing more than what is expected will make sure that your customers will be pleased with your works. This is important in printing shops, typing jobs and even small business related to food.

Taking note of these seemingly simple action points will serve you well as you look to take your business forward.

We are living in an age where the internet is tied into all that we do, this is especially true when it comes to the development of a …..

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….. company’s business strategy. All corporations and small businesses know that they need to have a website and that leads to the topic of this post. No matter how great the graphics may be or how well designed any website may be, it is of little use if the people who the information contained therein never ever come across the site. This is where the ever moving and rather complicated matter of how to get website visitors come into play so that when searching for specific subject matters users come across the website to meet their needs.

Many are confused over this matter and that is one of the reasons behind the launching of InternetAdvertisingTechniques.com [click the hyperlink above]. The amazing recently developed technology will enable anyone to drive targetted traffic to their website. If you are reading this and you have a blog, social networking page, small business website or an information product – you are strongly advised to go to InternetAdvertisingTechniques.com to see how you can start to generate website traffic today.

Ok, so let’s continue with these thoughts on Small Businesses making use of Business Consultants :-

Making using of a business consultant certainly does not mean that one does not have the requisite skills to run their business.

One of the main advantages to using a strategic business specialist is that they can take a look at ones business with a critical eye and help one fine tune it. They can help to see what can be improved with the operations and what needs to be changed.

The fact is that the advice that will be given by using a specialist strategic visionary and expert business marketing consultant may not always easy to hear, but the advice may help to advance ones company.

Taking the steps to hiring a strategic business consultant really goes on to help people see that the business owner cares enough about their company to actually go and ask another person, that is someone who is more experienced and knowledgeable, how it can run more smoothly and how they can improve upon the operations.

When we analyse some of the reasons why the smaller companies fail, we can see that the reasons can be put down to to lack of a strategic business plan to follow. Getting outside help can assist move the operation forward in the right direction.

So in summary, with the use of the internet one is now able to get expert from the other side of the globe, so do not let anything act as a barrier or hindrance. Make mentoring and coaching something as a matter of course that you have as a part of your business’ overall strategy and direction.

Any thoughts or comments please get in touch and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you with the direction of your business.

I talk to many small businesses, some are startups and many others have been operating for a few years. One common theme that I see is that when I start to explain about my three month marketing strategy process which includes focussing on Channel Marketing, Internet Marketing, Category Marketing, Market Segmentation, Branding, Supply and Demand and more there is a reticence and reluctance to stop and consider the marketing process.

The point is that so many small businesses and work from home organisations are in love with their product and not necessarily looking out and seeing what is is that the customer actually desires, wants and needs. That is one reason why business do not grow – as they continue to do the same things over and over again.

I find myself explaining that there is a reason why all the large corporates have marketing departments and why people go to university to study marketing. Unfortunately this falls on death ears in many cases and the owners continue to (try to) do the marketing themselves. The skill of business negotiation and communication must be learnt and deveoped over time as with any other skill.

If you are running a small business, whether it be a work from home operation or you have employees in an office. Consider this, where could your business be in say six months time if you stop and spend some time on working on the most critical part of your business which is your marketing strategy. Do not fall in love with your product, fall in love with the marketing process and continually searching out and determining what it is that your customers want. This is how businesses grow, make your business a growth business and consider stategies such as niche marketing on an ongoing basis.

More and more I am incorporating the use of the internet as key component of the business strategies of the companies I do consulting work for. The point that I work to get across to clients is that they should be using their internet presence to act as equity for their business. What do I mean by this ? Well, most companies (small work from home businesses as well as the large corporates !!) may well have a website but it actually serves no purpose in terms of acting as realy equity for the business. In many cases the website actually received no or very little traffic as the business owner’s concern is with having a website as opposed to incorporating the internet presence into the overall company’s business strategy.

We have the world class expertise to create information products (we have many, many of our own) and to drive traffic to the website. Below is an example of one of the products we have created for ourselve in a ever growing and popular market niche :- (for the best clarity watch the video by clicking here [it may well take some time to load])

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As I mention business strategy, that leads me on to another point – most of the small businesses I come across have no business plan or marketing strategy. At times company’s may put a basic plan together in order to get money from the banks but this is not the same as having a coherent market focussed business strategy dealing with components such as :-

Ideal Client Profile

Channel Strategies

Branding

Category Marketing

…. and the list can go on. I cover this and more when I work with clients and even provide a service where we create information products which are complimentary to their core ‘bricks and mortar’ business and give them the strategies to bring visitors to their main and auxiliary websites. After all, what is the point in having a website if noone ever visits the site to see what you have to offer ?

Many of the small work from home business I consult with have little or no internet presence. By that I mean; even if they do have a website – it may as well not be there as it receives little or no traffic; and in cases is not even indexed in any of the major search engines. Any traditional small business (whether you be a make up artist, woodworker, plumber, clockmaker or massage therapist) is leaving on the table by not building a long term business strategy (most do not have a strategy at all !) which includes using the internet in its appropriate marketing channel.

Building a strong foundation and presence on the internet will mean that you build your brand, it will open up the doors to customers and partnerships on a worldwide basis and lead the business to the path where it is generating revenue whether the owner is working or not.

One of the best and most effective things any small business can do is to start running and operating a blog as a part of the overall business strategy. This will include having the blog hosted on the company’s own servers (more on this in another post) and a long term plan regarding the posts that will be added in order to educated the world and build an online relationship with potential clients.

Another things that traditional businesses are not wary of is of the revenue that is generated annually from the sales of digital information products. The point here is that I am yet to come across anyh business which was not able to create a series of digital products (such as one I created for my own business here ) which can be sold over and over and over again.

To cater for the large need in the market place I ahev extended my standard consulting program to include the design and development of a full scale internet markey system, 1 month worth of four intensive 3 to 4 hour strategy sessions and then the continuation of driving traffic to the wesbite using tried and tested internet marketing strategies. We use these strategies to manage our portfolio of over 100 websites. If you like to know more, and have an interest in taking your business to the next level and connecting with people in your field the world over – please do get in touch.

I’ve made a post on Hub Pages giving some tips on how to use a blog to build your brand online. Essentially I have condensed hours and hours of consulting time down into a short article from which you can glean from and build on the content. Blogs are being used as serious Business Building and Brand Building tools and the sooner businesses and in particular small business start using blog as part of their overall business strategy the quicker they will build their online presence and see an improvement in their revenues.

Every business whether big or small, national or international, family run or corporate structured – exists to provide a product or service via a marketing channel to the end user customer.

That is so simple to say yet so hard to focus on marketing and making the process of provision of the product smoother. Based upon my experience in working in over 20 countries throughout Europe, the U.S. and the Far East and working with my small business clients – I’ve put together a short report covering, Branding, Category Marketing, Niche Marketing and more. It is a part of the business man’s encyclopaedia and you can a free copy at http://www.businessmansencyclopaedia.com/

What does your company mean or stand for ? when I ask this question – I don’t mean to you, I mean what does it mean to your current and future or potential customers.

The process of branding means that the spotlight is turned on us as the provider of the product or service whether we are a small or home business. There is a reason why consumers pay multiples of the base cost for water to buy certain brands of water, in terms of beverages consider Coke or Cola and the situation where an individual goes into a bar and asks for a Coke, the bar person replies ‘we only have pepsi and in nine times out of ten the customer nods their head and says ok.

The customer uses Coke as a generic term for any Cola drink. This can be used in contrast to when one goes to the corner store to purchase bread or milk both of which are considered and known as commodity purchases. When building the brand of our companies we must aim to be known as the ‘Coke’ of our industries. When we operate with this mindset this will ensure that the tactics which we work towards daily are based around building our brand to be the best in class in our market category.

Unfortunately the majority of small businesses and home businesses fail to work on this particular component of their business and marketing strategy – hope you find this useful. For more information on business and business strategies visit :- http://www.businessmansencyclopaedia.com/